(b Venice, 30 Jan 1927). Italian architect, stage designer and teacher, active in Cuba. He graduated from the Istituto Superiore d’Archittetura in Venice in 1952, where he was a pupil of Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini and Luigi Piccinato (b 1899). He began his professional career in BBPR Architectural Studio in Milan. In 1957 he went to Venezuela to work in a local studio and in 1960 was invited to join a Cuban programme. Thereafter he trained architectural students in the problems of creativity and plasticity as professor of Basic Design of the Faculty of Architecture in Havana. In 1961 he took part with Ricardo Porro and Vittorio Garatti in designing the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte at Cubanacán, Havana, his particular role being the designing of the Escuela de Artes Dramáticas. In this building he combined the compact volumetric tradition of brick walls and the irregular urban spaces of medieval Italian cities with the internal courtyards of Spanish colonial tradition. The work was broken off in 1965 but the project was resumed in 1980, when he combined High Tech components with pre-existing elements. In the Menocal Command Post in the province of Havana (1967) he adapted prefabricated structural elements to form an organic-looking structure that develops down from the top of a hill. His later stage designs introduced a meaningful connection between architecture, painting and scenic arts in Cuban culture. Examples include Girón (1981) and Dédalo (1989), designed for the Conjunto de Danza Contemporánea de Cuba.

• Gottardi (Folin), Roberto
  • Cuba, §III, 3: Architecture: Post-Revolutionary period, 1959 and after